Death of the Horse Trader

Chapter 5 The Horse Trader and the Protestor

Chapter 5

The team and I scour the house from top to bottom,  no bloody rag, towel, shirt, sweater, scarf, tablecloth, to be found.  Tony and his girlfriend are scowling fiercely at the officers and at me.  The team heads to the last room to be searched, it is a small office size room with a desk, a picture of Tony, his dad and Colton is on the desk, looking like they are all friends, Justin he looks younger, is in the picture,  but more to the side than in it. Tony is a boy on a pony in the picture and he looked happy for once sitting there on an appaloosa pony, he looked to be  about 5 years old.  There is a woman also in the picture she looks familiar a bit, but is very young like about 18 years old, Thomas is standing there with his arm around her I look and see wedding bands on their fingers is this Tony's mother?   Colton is looking at her and smiling at her and she is looking at Colton, something about her is starting to look familiar, no  it not  Colton's ex wife though...it will come to me soon I need to think about it.  

On the desk is newspaper clippings -  there is a story about a barn fire, the one at the farm, that destroyed the main barn and killed Ava's personal horse.  Why would this be out?  I think back to what Ava said about the clippings in her dresser.   This looks like part of the collection she had, why is this here in this office, is it a part of the murder? Is it  a link to to the case?  I have the team carefully bag  it for evidence, I look for other memorabilia and do not see any photo album, there are some other photos of the woman in the picture and none of them show her aging - so what happened here did she leave them?  Was she married to Thomas even?  A sister?  They had the same bands  on - I look closer they are not wedding bands but family crest rings with an F engraved in a large gold band on each one, so family then.  I look around more there is a bookcase that has more photos in frames, the woman is in more pictures with Thomas I begin to wonder who she really is.   She doesn't look like Tony much so maybe not his mother, she is pretty with dark brown hair, has brown eyes and has a pert nose,  and a nice smile.  She appears to look like she is Thomas' sister, same eyes as Thomas same smile, different nose though.  I try to remember  if Tony had a crest ring and do not recall seeing one.   

I then see the college degree listing her name and the last name of my college professor.  WTH?  My professors wife is Tony's aunt?  That could explain the protestors marching and his connection to it.  That little tidbit  puts some light on things.  I have to make an appointment to question them further, I make a note on my phone to call Casey later to go with me.

I still need to  find evidence, I lean on a shelf and the whole shelf moves and I stumble backwards to see a false door open, I find a whole wall of memories on a white board except that they are al photos of protests dealing with Colton and horse slaughter companies in several states.  Holy s**t did this hit the fan.   Was this  her office still?  It was clean and had no dust.  She did not live too far  from here to come here and work out of.  I need to talk to Casey very soon about this!  I dont think we have this connection  in our previous scenarios.  Neither one of us made this connection, nor realized they were related.  Tara Flynn Mortimer, could be moved to  the suspect list. 

I find a cabinet that has a plastic bag in it, I open the bag and find a pair of shoes, old sneakers to be exact,  dirt covered with a  brown reddish stain spot on one shoe.   hmmmm whose shoes are these and is that spot  blood, and whose blood is it?  I wonder  if they thought it would have been hidden if we searched the house since I stumbled into opening the  wall up I might not have found it at all.  Pretty suspicious if you ask me.

I call an officer to come in to bag the shoes, feeling confident that I have found something I keep searching the office for more items, likely to make  have more clothing that may have stains of blood on them.   I do a sweep of the room and then have the officers come in to take pictures and check nooks and crannies of the  hidden room.  I find a couple more newspaper clippings some with pictures of Tara in them,  the connection  now visible why she was writing speeches for  Thomas now making me wonder if she has something to do with Colton and what that was.  

I call Casey and he says he looked into what I texted him earlier about checking public records   he gets  the  marriage certificate of Professor Mortimer and Tara, find out that  Colton was a witness to the marriage also long ago.  Small towns just make life  a big circle with everyone here.  

"Tara is a vegan, no meat,  hence  why she was a protestor and avid animal advocate, but why would she  do that to someone she personally knew that was a witness to her marriage for Pete's sake! " Casey  continues with his results on researching  her " come to find out that she also was a horsewoman back in the day, and was a customer, and semi partner with Colton on business ventures.  He staked her first barn and helped her get  some horses to sell for her to get her started in the business.  The partnership ended  8 years ago.  Right before the fire happened at his farm.  It was a court case that was settled and then the fire happened at the barn after it was settled.  However,  why did the barn get burned down if it was settled out of court? Which usually means that  a high price was paid to them to end the partnership, in most  dissolved   partnerships unless they were not happy with the amount. She then sold out of the business after the fire happened and just became a activist after that and housewife"

"Maybe she wanted something he didnt want to give her?"  I think about the picture of her smiling at Colton and his return of that smile. "What were they to each other?  Friends? Lovers? Partners? Enemies?? It was a long time ago but sometimes  history has a way of  lingering around."   

"When did the Professor come into the picture?" I ask Casey to look that up if he has anything to announce an engagement " they announced their engagement  when  Tony was 7 years old, so two years from the looks of the photo. Plenty of time to get into an affair of the heart that  gone wrong and burn a barn down and later plan revenge years later on a bad deal.  Hell has no fury like a woman scorned they say..."

Casey raises his eyebrows at me and gives me a strange look.  "What?"  

"I think that we may have the killer in our grasp then" I tell him flatly,  something nagging at me though that I can't put my finger on  and my mind thinks about the day of the barn fire.

Did she really burn down the barn or  was this just something she kept track of  due to  doing business with him?